Marked
by zeegrindylows
Summary: A biography of the early life and childhood of one Severus Snape. In progress.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer**: Harry Potter and associated characters are the intellectual property of JK Rowling. I just played with them a little.

By the age of five, he was a marked man.

Before the age of five, in fact, if he had only known it. A murder in utero. As if he could have done anything about it.

His mother, the witch, consulted a fortune-teller the night before she married her Muggle lover. She was a real fortune-teller-a wrinkled, toothless old crone, who had the Sight and sold it for pennies to keep herself in meager supplies of second-rate tea and sausages.

"Give me the cup," she had snapped, the second that Eileen drained the last drops of her hastily-brewed tea.

She squinted her one good eye, beginning to cloud over with cataract, and turned the cup this way and that.

"Two children only," she said, her voice a malicious, old-woman's rasp, "a girl and a boy."

Eileen started to exclaim, started to clasp her hands, her eyes glowing with the light of such love that it made even her plain features momentarily lovely. But the crone held up her wizened hand.

"There's more," she said, turning the cup again. "The boy will grow to be powerful. Powerful, and noble. But he'll be a killer." She looked up, leveling her half-blind gaze at Eileen's pale face and gracing her with a crooked smile. "A murderer."

Eileen's denials withered on her lips. She knew better than to contradict a woman such as this, no matter how tightly she might hold her disbelief in her heart. She left a galleon on the table; it was lucky to overpay fortune tellers.

But the wedding day was beautiful. Tobias was all smiles, his long hair swept back from his head, the better to display his aquiline features, the joy of plain little Eileen's heart. It was easy to forget the fortune teller's words, easy to tell herself that the old woman could hardly be expected to See accurately every time. It must have been a mistake, or perhaps a cruel joke, played on a blushing bride by a bitter old woman forever past her prime.

And their first year was equally beautiful. A glow of love seemed to follow her wherever she went, lending grace to her gangliness and delicacy to her heavy, square face. She was hardly surprised, wrapped in that love, to learn that she had fallen pregnant just a week after they marked their first anniversary.

They engaged a midwife, a woman who plied her trade amongst Muggles and Wizards alike. Eileen wanted no part of Muggle hospitals, and Tobias was happy enough to submit to her wishes. They prepared to birth the baby at Eileen's parents' home, in the country, as far away from the prying eyes of the Muggle government as they could get.

She was huge when the time finally came, so swollen that she could hardly walk. Tobias sat by the hour and read to her, to save her the exertion. The child seemed to move constantly, shifting and kicking to find room. Eileen's face was thin and worn from lack of sleep. And then the labor pains came.

The midwife was duly summoned and duly arrived, carrying a bag of tools in one hand and her wand in the other. She was businesslike and maternal all at once, dispensing commands to Eileen's parents and to Tobias, letting no one be still except Eileen, who, she said, was already working enough, thank you very much.

It took twenty-two hours from the moment she arrived until the moment that Eileen, convinced she was about to die, and ready to welcome it, heard the midwife say "Here we are, now," and then there was nothing but pain and pushing, her mother mopping her brow and Tobias peeking around the door from the hallway, where he had been banished.

When she next knew herself, silence reigned. The midwife, her mother, and old Mrs. Prince, her grandmother, stood clustered at the foot of her bed, staring gravely downward.

"What is it?" she whispered, suddenly afraid.

Nobody answered. Eileen struggled to sit up straighter, struggled to see whatever it might be, however horrible. She _had_to see.

A perfectly formed infant lay on the edge of the bed. A tiny girl, with thick, black hair, thicker than any baby she had ever seen before, eyes closed, her tiny hands balled into fists. And another baby-a boy, with the same thick hair, perhaps twice the size of his sister. _His_eyes were open, his mouth working, suckling at the air, his hand wrapped tightly around his sister's ankle. He kicked his feet in the air, staring up at the four women who watched him, making no sound.

Only when she saw the healthful vibrancy of the boy did she realize that the girl wasn't breathing.

"What's the matter?" she mumbled, staring in horror. "What has he done?"

The midwife started, and looked at her oddly. "He hasn't done anything, love," she said gently. "These things happen and it's nobody's fault. Let's clean him up and you can feed the wee lad."

But when she went to lift him, she could not pry his fingers from the dead baby's ankle. His grip was too tight for any of them to unwind. Nor did he cry, even when the midwife, giving up her attempts to open his grip, rubbed him down briskly with a blanket and tousled his dark, matted hair. He simply turned his black eyes on her and cooed, an innocent, baby sound.

"Bless him," she said fondly, stroking his cheek, "he isn't to know."

But Eileen, dizzy with pain and exhaustion, knew better. She remembered the words of the fortune teller, and shuddered with revulsion. A murderer. He had killed his sister.

She could never love him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer**: Harry Potter and associated characters are the intellectual property of JK Rowling. I just played with them a little. 

In the end, they only way they could get him to let go was by starving him until he wept. His angry screams filled the room, filled the house, and Eileen stopped her ears and turned away, unable to bear the sound. He let go of his sister then, balling up his little fists as he wailed and kicked, learning for the first time what it meant to be hungry.

Then the midwife gently whisked away the stillborn little girl, and old Mrs. Price swaddled the boy and brought him to his mother.

"Do your duty, girl," she said harshly, when Eileen tried to refuse him. "What kind of mother are you?"

What could she say? The soft, baby skin that should have delighted her filled her with nausea. The grunting and snorting sounds that he made as he hungrily suckled her reminded her of nothing so much as a pig, and his huge, black eyes, when they turned on her, made her skin crawl.

But she fed him, keeping her eyes carefully fixed on the opposite wall, touching him only through the blankets in which he was swaddled, and when the heavy ache in her breasts was relieved and his abominable tears had ceased, she put him away from her, handed him to his father.

Tobias took the boy in silence. Unlike her mother and grandmother, he didn't remonstrate with her, taking her at her word when she protested her need for sleep. She couldn't bear to tell him about the fortune teller, or about her conviction that her son had murdered his sister and that no more would be born to replace her. Nor could she admit to her husband, the light of her life, that she hated his son.

Days, and then weeks passed, and her revulsion only grew. When the boy, Severus, named for his great-great-grandfather on the Prince side, was six weeks old, she could take no more of it. When he began to cry and nuzzle her chest toothlessly for milk, she started to scream, until her own voice drowned his out.

"No!" she sobbed, "I won't do it any more, get him away from me!"

Her mother said nothing, but took the hungry, mewling thing away from her, and engaged a wet nurse.

The sight of him seemed to poison her more every time she saw him. He looked like his father, who doted on him, and gradually the light went out of her love for Tobias as well, and then the love disappeared altogether. She hated them both, and nursed her pain in darkness, brooding over it in the secret corners of her mind, until her entire mind seemed to be made up of secret corners. Old friends stopped calling on her, and she caught fragments of whispers. _Insanity has always run in the Prince family. There was an uncle... the great-grandmother... the third cousin..._

It was his father's fault. She should have known better, Eileen Prince, daughter of a hundred generations of purebloods, should never have married a Muggle. Her parents hadn't stood in her way-they loved her and spoiled her too much for that-but they should have. She swallowed a desperate sob of regret. They should have kept her from marrying Tobias Snape and sullying the blood of her children. What had been the result! The child's cries tore at her mind from morning until night, and her eyes were opened more every day to the clumsiness and stupidity of her coarse Muggle husband.

Even her parents had been tainted by association. They loved the little monster that had sprung from her loins. Her father brought it toys and her mother rocked it in her arms and pinched its sallow cheeks. Eileen couldn't understand their attraction to the thing. It had looked healthy enough at birth, to her chagrin, but as the months wore by it grew sallow and fretful.

Tobias, who had loved her with undivided love before she gave birth to the tiny Grendel whose cot lay just outside of her bedroom door, now barely had a word for her, so taken up was he with the welfare of the thing. His first thought in the morning was for the infant, and his first thought on returning from work at the mill, and his last thought before he went to sleep.

Everybody exclaimed what a sweet, tender child he was, how loving, how alert, how intelligent. Everyone tried to get her to see what a lovely personality the little lad had. But it was to no avail. In vain did they exult that he spoke his first word at a mere nine months of age. In vain did her blood-traitor mother exclaim and admire when he began to sit, and then to crawl, and then to walk, and then to run.

She didn't care. She knew better, and someday, they would know as well-they would know that Severus Snape was a murderer.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer**: Harry Potter and associated characters are the intellectual property of JK Rowling. I just played with them a little.

By the time he turned five, Severus had got some idea that his mother was, well, maybe not quite like other mothers.

There was a little boy down the street whose mum-Severus was never allowed to call _his _mother "mum"-made him sandwiches every day, piling sausage and cheese on thick slices of homemade bread. His mother never made sandwiches.

And there was a little girl, who lived in the house just beside theirs. They had made friends through the sharing of a sad little back garden. _Her _mum kept potted plants and came out every day to tend them. She wore pretty, brightly-colored dresses and sang songs while she hung her wash out to dry. Sometimes she brought out biscuits and weak tea for her little girl, and a few happy times there was even an extra cup for Severus.

Eileen (for that was what he called his mother) wore black. His father had the washing sent out to a little old woman who lived next to the mill where he worked, because Eileen refused to wash clothes. She sat in the front room by the hour, staring out the window like a woman in a trance. Severus wasn't allowed in the front room, as it was only for mother, and for receiving company, but he had watched her through the keyhole.

Every morning, his dad rose with the sun and made up a bit of breakfast for them. For himself and Severus, it was usually a bit of toast or some tinned sardines, and strong tea. For Eileen, he fried sausages and eggs, cut slices of fine white bread baked specially and off-limits to Severus, opened little pots of marmalade, and loaded them all up onto a tray with a single flower in a vase. Severus was never allowed to carry the tray, or to go into the front room while his mother received it.

Severus spent the mornings doing chores. Mother never left the front room until Severus was in bed, and dad worked all hours at the mill, so it fell to Severus to wash up, sweep the floors, and dust what things he could reach.

For lunch, his father bought a pasty from a woman who sold them at the mill, and carried a bit of it home for Severus. They sat on the front step and ate together in companionable silence; Tobias was a man of few words. When they had finished, he gave Severus a cuff around the head and walked back to the mill.

Then it was playtime. The other children who lived on Spinner's End were a close-knit group, whose fathers all worked together at the mill, and whose mothers spent their days washing, cooking, and gossiping on their front steps while they shared a fag and passed fashion magazines back and forth between them. Severus was shy with them, because he knew that his mother was different, but they included him in their group games, for the most part. He was never scrubbed quite as clean as they were, and his clothes were never quite as well mended, but he could run fast, he could hold his own in a fight, and he could squeeze his wiry little body into holes where none of the rest of them could get, and that was enough.

Tea was much like breakfast, eaten cold and in a hurry in the dark when dad finally made it home from the mill. Then Severus was sent up to bed.

Only then would Eileen emerge from the front room. The heavy door would scrape across the floor, and he could hear his mother's slow footsteps and her low voice. This was the best time. As soon as the door to his tiny bedroom was closed, and Tobias was on his way down the stairs, Severus would slip out of bed and prostrate himself on the floor, where a single knothole let him peer down into the kitchen below and listen to his parents.

They rarely spoke much. Eileen was haughty, though Severus didn't know to call it that. Tobias waited on her like a servant, speaking even less than she did, but looking, like Severus did, with a sort of hungry longing at the thin, dark-haired woman who deigned to join him in his humble kitchen. Sometimes Tobias would read to her, haltingly, and she would listen distantly, her eyes averted from him. They never spoke of their son.

When their sole candle flickered out, it was time for bed. Severus hurried back under his covers in time to pretend to be sleeping when his father looked in on him.

Eileen never looked in on him.

There were no grandparents on the Snape side, but, though his maternal grandfather had died a year after his birth, there was Gran.

Tobias referred to Gran as "Mrs. Prince," but to Severus, she was always Gran. He had vague memories of seeing her often, and Tobias told him stories of the past, when Gran had come every Sunday for dinner and stayed to visit with mother in the front room. Now, she came twice a year, on mother's birthday and on Severus'. On mother's birthday, she had a kiss for Severus and a handful of sweets before she was let into the front room for a few hours. But on Severus' birthday, she never went into the front room at all.

On Severus' birthday, Gran arrived on the front step wearing a perfectly-pressed dress, always with perfectly-matched hat, veil, bag, and shoes, and spotless white gloves. Severus met her at the door and let her in, where she proceeded to deplore his stunted growth, peer over her spectacles at his oversized, poorly-patched clothes, draw a bucket of water, and scrub his face, hair, and hands with a vigor and thoroughness that escaped either of his parents.

Then came the best part. Gran had a secret, and Severus was allowed to enjoy it once a year, on his birthday.

Gran could do magic.

She would gather Severus into her arms, make him close his eyes, and spin in a circle. Her arms squeezed tighter and tighter, until suddenly she loosened her grip again and let him open his eyes.

The whole world was transformed! Where before there had been the gritty, smoky slum of Spinner's End, there was Diagon Alley. Everywhere he looked were bright colors, strange sights, interesting smells, and fascinating sounds. Gran bought him sweets unlike any that were sold in the shops that Tobias took him to. Women and men dressed in robes instead of clothes, _everyone_had long hair, and nearly everyone carried a wand.

Gran let him explore as he willed, and he wandered at his pleasure through bookstores, clothing stores, and purveyors of potions ingredients. He stared at toads and rats and owls. He ate ice cream that came in flavors that the other children of Spinner's End could hardly even dream of. He inspected toy broomsticks, and stared at the real ones, imagining the day when, perhaps, he might be big enough to try one of _them_.

For lunch, they dined-Gran always called it 'dining'-at the Leaky Cauldron. Gran took a private room, and instructed him on his table manners, explaining to him the importance of placing a napkin on his lap and never letting his elbows rest on the table. She explained to him what it meant to be a wizard, about the history of his family, and about all of the wondrous things magic could do.

When they finished eating, Severus was allowed to play with the things Gran had bought him. He played hard, for he knew that this was the only chance he would have. Throughout the meal they had just eaten, Gran had explained to him the requirement for secrecy among wizards, and gently reminded him that this requirement meant he would never be able to bring his birthday gifts home.

He played and played, while Gran watched, smiling her faint smile. She was a stern, serious woman, but Severus wasn't afraid of her. He loved her intensely, second only to his father.

He played until long past dark, falling asleep on the floor amongst his toys. Then gentle arms gathered him up, and squeezed him tightly. Before he knew it, he was laid in his own bed, tucked in, and given a kiss.

When he woke up in the morning, only the last, half-finished packet of sweets laid on his bedside table convinced him that it hadn't all been a dream.

* * *

><p>He awoke slowly on the day after his fifth birthday, half-convinced he had dreamed the events of the day before until he made out the outline of a packet of Cockroach Clusters on the soapbox that served as his bedside table.<p>

He was stiff and cold when he got out of bed. The house had no heat, and in the cold mornings he could see his own breath in the air. But there was hot tea waiting for him downstairs, he knew, and perhaps a bit of sausage in honor of his birthday.

There was, in fact, something even better than this. A small brown box sat on the table, tied with a scrap of string.

"Dad?" he said, as he climbed into his seat. "What's this?"

"For you, lad," said Tobias Snape gruffly, setting the longed-for tea and sausage on the table for him. "Not so posh as what your grandmother gave you, mind, but you can keep it."

Severus gulped his tea, shivering pleasantly as it filled his belly with warmth. Stuffing half the sausage in his mouth, he held it in his teeth while he attacked the box, struggling to untie the knot. It was tied tightly, and his fingers were still clumsy with the cold, but eventually he pulled the ends apart and opened the box.

A tiny tabby kitten crouched in a corner of the box, staring up at him with huge eyes. It was malnourished and skinny, obviously a stray. When it saw Severus, and smelled his sausage, it stood up, taking a step toward him.

"Is it-for me?" he whispered, wonderingly, his mouth still full of half-chewed sausage.

"Aye," said his father. "I expect you can keep it fed and out of the way, eh?"

Severus nodded, staring at the kitten. He felt overwhelmed with emotion. A pet of his very own! He might have preferred a dog, but a kitten was nearly as good. Besides, a dog might bark and bother mother.

"You'll be a wizard some day," said Tobias, staring into his cup of tea. "Your mother used to keep cats. Said they was magic."

Severus looked up at his father, startled. They rarely discussed Eileen, and it had never occurred to him before that Eileen could do the same magic that Gran could. "She did?"

"Mm," said Tobias, setting down his mug and standing up. "You keep that cat out of her way."

Severus gathered it up into his hands. It dug its claws into his shoulder and mewed loudly. "Yes, sir," he mumbled, rubbing his cheek on the kitten's soft fur. "Er... what's its name, dad?"

His father's face cracked into a smile. "Whatever you think to call it, I suppose that'll be its name. Hurry on outside."

Severus obeyed, clutching his half-eaten sausage in one hand and his kitten in the other. Inside, he could hear the clink of dishes as Eileen's tray was prepared and set by the door, and then the heavy slam of the front door as Tobias left for the mill. He put the kitten down, took another bite of his sausage, and then stared hard at his new pet. After a moment, a thought occurred to him, and he picked the cat up and peeked between its legs.

A girl, apparently.

Well, there was only one name that he really loved when it came to girls. "Reckon I'll call you Mum," he said.


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer**: Harry Potter and associated characters are the intellectual property of JK Rowling. I just played with them a little.

* * *

><p>It took only a few days of patiently feeding her smuggled bits of his meals before Mum the cat became Severus' most loyal companion. Except when she ran wild on the hunt, she was at his side, rubbing herself on his legs or butting his feet with her head and paws.<p>

Severus, for his part, adored her. He had scarcely thought to ask for a pet, but now that he had one, he felt that he couldn't imagine one more perfect. He doted on her, talked to her by the hour, incorporated her into his private games, and even went so far-once-as to let the neighborhood children pass her around and pet her, until one of the older boys threatened to throw her into the mill river in a sack.

"Mum's a stupid name for a cat." He was a bullying, bulldog-faced child, with spiky, close-cropped hair, named Jake.

"'Tisn't," said Severus, grabbing his beloved kitten and clutching her to his chest.

"It is. Only an idiot would give a cat a name like that."

Severus, all of five years old, and prone to bouts of sensitivity, felt his lower lip quiver. "I'm not an idiot."

"Sure, you must have got it from your parents. They already gave _you_ an idiot name, _Never_us."

"It's-it's Severus," Severus had whispered, struggling to keep Mum from jumping out of his arms.

"Nope, it's Never-us. See? Cause you'll never be like us!" Jake giggled at his own inane cleverness. A few of the less pleasant children began to laugh as well, muttering the name amongst themselves, trying it on for size and finding that they liked it.

Severus took a step back. "I'm like you," he said, still whispering. But he kept his eyes downcast. Secretly, he knew they were right, and it pained him in a strange new way.

"You aren't," said Jake, suddenly angry. "Your mum is mad. I heard _my_ dad say so to _my_ mum. She's as mad as anything, and _you're _mad as well!"

He dropped the cat. She fell lightly to her feet, but Severus scarcely noticed through the sudden blur of hot tears in his eyes. "You're lying," he said, anger and pain giving him boldness. "She's not mad."

"Don't you call me a liar! I heard my dad say it! He said she's barking, and she hates you, and that your dad ought to have upped and left you both as soon as you were born!"

It was not exactly that the words hurt him physically. They didn't. But the dark, piercing truth of them struck Severus to the core and his heart wrenched painfully in his chest. The pug-faced Jake sneered triumphantly at him and took a step closer. Severus stared dully at him. Defeated, he stooped down to pick Mum up again and carry her home.

"Where do you think _you're _going?" asked Jake, balling his hands into fists.

Severus took a step backward, holding Mum tighter. He tried to answer, but his mouth had gone dry.

"I think it's about time we teach you what we do to people who don't belong here." Jake punctuated his sentence with a punch to his own hand, smirking cruelly.

He would have taken another step backward, but two of Jake's cronies had got in his way, and he bumped into them instead. The children who had gathered around him to play with Mum had all either fled or joined Jake's gang and started to chant "Never-us, Never-us," again and again. The words infuriated him. They were nonsense. They weren't even his real name. It was a _stupid_ joke. And Mum was a perfectly fine name for a cat if he wanted to call it that. His father had said so.

A treacherous thought brought his father's expression before him at the exact moment when he'd announced Mum's new name. The flicker of disquiet on his face had made Severus falter. "Is it-is it alright?" he'd asked anxiously.

"A fine name for a cat," Tobias had said, ruffling up his son's hair and clearing his throat. "If that's what you want to call it."

"My dad said it's a fine name," said Severus, or he meant to, but the words didn't seem willing to leave his throat. The bullies had closed in all around him and there was no escape. He looked around frantically. There was an opening in the group just a few feet away, and if he could only get there, he knew he would be able to outrun them and get to the safety of his own house.

But there was no way to get there. They had closed in too tightly, some of them still stupidly chanting, some of them picking up rocks and sticks, or balling their fists up as Jake had done.

There was no way out. He was trapped, and they were going to thrash him and kill his cat. Oddly enough, his tears had dried. Let them beat him. Let them kill his cat. When it was all over, he would drag himself home, swollen and bruised, with the broken and mangled body of his beloved kitten in his arms. He would knock on the door to the front room with no timidness, and he would present himself to Eileen, and then they would see.

For he knew, he _knew_ that his mother must love him. And when she saw him in such a pathetic state, all of her love would come to the front and, when she had bandaged his wounds and perhaps given him a chocolate biscuit for his tea, she would march out into the street and find their mothers, and their mothers would tell their fathers, and their fathers would whip them, and _then_ they'd be sorry. And then he would have to go and stay in hospital for his injuries, and Eileen would sit by his bedside and weep and regret ignoring him for so long. The doctors would say they feared for his life, and just when Eileen was sure that little Severus was gone, he would revive and awaken to be cuddled and made much of just as he had always longed for.

So charmed was he by this vision of his own pathetic fate that he had allowed his eyes to flutter closed, the better to visualize it. And no sooner had he closed his eyes, but Jake's fist made contact with his cheek.

The reality of being struck as compared to the rather romantic notion of the aftermath of his beating reminded Severus that he really preferred not to be beaten at all, no matter how pleasant the ultimate outcome. He cried out, and stumbled to one side, where he was roughly shoved back into a standing position. Mum's claws dug painfully into him as she tried to scramble free, but he couldn't make himself let go of her.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could still see the spot from which he would be able to flee, but still there was no way to get through the press of children that surrounded him.

Nothing for it but to take the beating like a man.

Over the next few moments, time seemed to slow. He saw Jake raise his fist to hit him again, and saw that, this time, he wasn't aiming for Severus' face, but for his cat, who crouched in his arms with her ears flat back on her head. He _had_ to protect her-what else could he do?-so, squeezing his eyes shut in case anyone else was striking out at his face, he clutched Mum to his chest and spun around so that Jake would hit his back.

What happened next confused and frightened him. A loud _crack _sounded in the street, so loud that Jake and the other children who had been closest to Severus lost their footing and fell to the ground. Severus, for his part, opened his eyes and found himself standing in exactly the spot he had been so longingly staring at just a moment before-completely outside the knot of children, who were staring at him with fear and confusion.

For a second, they all stared. Severus was too confused, and they were too frightened to advance. Then, Severus remembered himself, remembered that at any moment they might encircle him again, and ran for his life.

He stood outside the door to the front room, holding his bruised face and struggling with his tears, he couldn't muster the nerve to actually knock. Jack's words rang in his ears, and for the first time, he began to wonder if perhaps, the largest difference between Eileen and other mothers was that Eileen did not love him.

His father found him there five hours later, still standing at the door, one side of his face purple and swollen, with Mum the cat curled up asleep around his feet.

"Severus? What's happened, lad?"

Severus blinked, his eyes suddenly hot again with tears. "I-I-" he said, but the weight of his fears was too heavy, and he could neither immediately tell Tobias what had happened, nor put to words the terrifying question that had formed in his mind.

Tobias dropped to one knee, grabbed Severus by the shoulders, and stared into his face urgently. "Who did this to you?" His voice was fierce, fiercer than Severus had ever heard it before.

It was the final straw. He burst into sobs and threw his arms around his father's neck, managing between his sobs to communicate at least the bare bones of what had happened-Jack, the other children, Mum's peril, and Severus' bewildering escape. All the while, Tobias held him and stroked his back tenderly. His father was an awkward man, with clumsy hands and feet too large for his surroundings, but now he comforted Severus with gentleness and delicacy that belied his frame.

After a while, Severus' sobs began to diminish, and he felt himself being lifted up. Tobias carried him up to his bed, tucked him in, and brought him a piece of the forbidden white bread, spread with butter.

"Dad?" said Severus. At any other time, he would have devoured the treat, but now it held little appeal for him, and he broke off a bit for Mum instead.

Tobias peered anxiously down at him. "Eh?"

Severus thought again about all that Jack had said. He thought about how different Eileen was from all the other mothers. He thought about the way that she never left the front room until Severus had been sent to bed. Perhaps she really was mad. And, if she was mad, she _might_not love him after all. But there was no way to say it, or to even ask a question that might hint at it. To say it would make it real.

"Nothing, dad," said Severus lamely, taking a bite of the bread to hide his embarrassment.

Tobias looked at him for a very long time. Then, he sighed and laid his heavy hand on his son's head.

"Go to sleep, Russ,"-his pet name for his son-"and never you worry. Come Sunday in two days, and I'll teach you how to fight."

When he closed the door behind him, Severus did not, as was his habit, jump out of bed to watch and listen through the knothole on the floor. He chewed his bread and butter slowly, so as to spare his aching jaw, and cried a few more lonely tears.

Below, he heard the quiet voice of Tobias, reading to Eileen, until sleep and troubled dreams claimed him.


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer**: Harry Potter and associated characters are the intellectual property of JK Rowling. I just played with them a little.

* * *

><p>On Sunday, sure enough, Tobias began to teach his son how to fight.<p>

"You look, Russ," he said, as they stood in what passed for their back garden. "Hold your fist like so."

"Like this?" Severus' fist was tiny beside his father's massive hand.

"With the thumb on the outside or you'll break it when you land a punch." Tobias adjusted Severus' hand to a better position.

"Okay, dad."

Tobias lit a fag and held it in his teeth. "Now then, it's best to hang back and let 'em try and hit you first. Watch 'em close, like, and duck out t' way. Throws 'em off-balance."

In exaggerated slow motion, he swung at Severus' head. Severus took a hasty step back.

"Not like that, lad." Tobias took a long drag, and blew the smoke aside. "Stay where you are so you've got reach to hit 'em back."

Again, he swung slowly at Severus' head. This time, Severus kept his feet still while he dodged the blow. Tobias' body twisted wildly off-balance and he leaned forward, scattering ash where he went.

"Tha's right." He grunted approval through his teeth. "Now, square in the jaw."

Severus hesitated. "Will I hurt you, dad?"

"Tha's the point, lad, tha's the point. S'too late now, I've got my balance back. Give it another go."

Once more, Tobias straightened and swung at his son. This time, Severus ducked lithely out of the way, balled his hand up into a fist, and swung with all of his might at his father's exposed jaw. His fist connected in an oddly satisfying way, and Tobias fell onto the ground, cigarette still held expertly in his teeth.

Severus gasped and ran over to him. "Did I hurt you, dad?"

"Come to think of it, you did a bit," said Tobias, reaching up to rub his stubbly chin. For a moment, Severus was afraid, but then he saw how his father's eyes twinkled.

"That's right!" shouted Severus joyfully, "I got you!" He leaped onto his father and pummeled his chest with his fists.

Tobias roared like a bear and lumbered to his feet so quickly that Severus would have fallen several feet onto the ground if his father hadn't caught him and tossed him up into the air. He shrieked with glee as his father caught him and tossed him up again.

They play-fought until teatime, when Tobias pronounced Severus as accomplished a fighter as any five-year-old needed to be. Severus basked in the glow of his dad's approbation and swung one more punch into his father's leg.

"Here now, Tobias Snape, what do you think you're doing?"

They both looked up. The mother of the girl next door stood by her basket of washing, watching them with an amused smile.

Tobias narrowed his eyes at her, took out his packet of fags, and lit a fresh one. He took a long drag and blew it out before he answered. "And where were you when young Jake Fairchild was trying to kill Russ' cat, Susannah Norris?"

She observed him levelly. "Tending my own house, like I ought."

"Mm," said Tobias, grown oddly quiet. "Well, lad, I think it's time we go inside and have a bite."

Mrs. Norris watched them go. As Tobias reached for the door, she took a step forward. "I've got a few extra cakes laid by inside, if you and Russ would like to come 'round and have your tea here."

Tobias stiffened and went still, his eyes still fixed on the door. Something about his changed demeanor made Severus feel strangely afraid, although he couldn't say why. At length, he turned to meet Mrs. Norris' gaze.

"I thank you kindly," he said, his voice oddly formal. "But we have food of our own here at home."

Mrs. Norris smiled in a way that reminded Severus inexplicably of a cat. "Are you sure it's got as much flavor as mine has?"

"We're accustomed," said Tobias gruffly. "Inside, Russ."

And in they went.

* * *

><p>The next year passed with all the pleasantness that could be gleaned from predictability and routine. Severus began grammar school. Mum the cat grew and thrived, and Mum the mother remained as she always had-reclusive and secretive. Tobias was Tobias, hard working, often absent, but always jolly when he was home, and Severus' favorite companion and playmate.<p>

Not all was unchanged, however. The episode with his cat had widened the rift that he felt between himself and the other children on the street. He was never invited to join their games now, unless a parent stood watch and shamed them into it.

On his sixth birthday, he told Gran the whole story, and she listened with pursed lips and angry eyes.

"Muggles," she said, disdain in her voice that Severus had never heard there before. "Pay them no mind, my darling boy. Soon enough you'll be off to Hogwarts to learn to be a true wizard, and they'll never trouble you again." Then she smiled warmly at him. "A successful Apparition at five years old! If you weren't in the books before, your name is certainly down now."

He didn't entirely understand what she meant, but the promise of Hogwarts—a real school just for Wizards!—went some way toward making up for his general ostracism by the children and even, he sometimes suspected, the parents of Spinner's End.

In fact, the only family on the street who seemed to treat Severus just the same as before was Mrs. Norris and her daughter, Samantha. Samantha still played with him in their shabby, shared back garden, and Mrs. Norris still smiled from behind her washing as she hung it out to dry, and still occasionally gave him a cake or a biscuit in the long afternoons when he sat home alone.

After finding himself to be a misfit in every other way, Severus found school to be a delightful surprise. He took to learning in a way he had taken to nothing else, grasping hungrily at every tidbit of knowledge his bemused schoolmistress could provide. He already knew how to read, thanks to the laborious efforts of Tobias on wet Sunday afternoons, but it was a revelation to him to discover that there was a wealth of words to be found beyond what the _Evening Chronicle_ could offer.

Often, Severus would take his schoolbooks outside and sit in the dirt of the back garden, knees hugged to his chest, reading. But he had soon read all of them from cover to cover more than once, and they began to bore him, until he spent far more time with his head leaning on his hand, staring at nothing, or watching Mrs. Norris do her chores, or watching Samantha serve tea to her dolls, a game for which he had no taste at all. One wash day, as Severus covertly watched her pulling down the dry linens from her line, Mrs. Norris paused over her basket, straightened up, and shaded her eyes, looking at him.

"Russ," she called, "you come over here."

Severus, obedient by habit, dutifully crossed the garden to where she stood.

"Is this yours, lad?" she held up a brightly colored volume with a picture on the front that Severus did not immediately recognize.

He stared shyly for a moment, and then shook his head. The book was one he had never seen before, the front cover splashed with a poorly-printed drawing of a man who might be a pirate, or a gypsy, or possibly just a well-dressed hobo with a flair for the dramatic.

"But it is," she said, fixing him with her bright eyes and smiling the strange, catlike smile he had seen before. "I'm sure of it. I can't imagine how it got into my washing."

Severus felt a pang of fear. She was surely angry at him for carelessly leaving this book in her basket, but it wasn't even his! He shook his head again, flushing red. "No," he said, tugging nervously at his long, uneven fringe so it would obscure his face, "it isn't mine."

Her smile grew wider. "I think it is, Russ." She opened it and pointed to the inside cover. Sure enough, it said _Severus Snape _just inside, in a hand not at all like his own. "You can't fool me. Take it back; I've no use for it."

She thrust the book into his hands and he stared at it as if it were a living thing suddenly and unexpectedly given into his care. "But—" he said, his voice quivering.

"Hush, lad," she winked at him, and he felt more flustered than ever. "Take it home and read it. What time have I got for reading?"

Bewildered, but grateful that he didn't seem to be in trouble, Severus clutched the book to his chest and fled, not stopping until he was up in his own comfortable bedroom where he could peruse it at his leisure, and without letting Mrs. Norris see any more of his embarrassment.

Over the following weeks, more books appeared. Some, like the first, were passed on to him by Mrs. Norris, who always disavowed any knowledge of their origin. Others he found hidden in the back garden, or tucked into the mail slot, or lying on the back step beside Mum the cat as she sunned herself. It was a mystery to Severus where they came from. He had tried to thank Mrs. Norris for a few, but she pled ignorance and ultimately forbad him from thanking her for merely returning what was obviously his, although she did often jokingly chide him (at least, he _thought_ she was joking) for being so careless with his things.

He knew that they didn't come from his father. Tobias was not a man to make a secret of his gifts, and even though the books were shabby and cheap, a regular supply of fresh literature was hardly within their budget, and hardly something Tobias would fail to mention if he had found a way to obtain it. Gifts were a celebrated rarity in the Snape household.

In fact, although he couldn't say why, Severus kept the books concealed from his father. Some sixth sense seemed to tell him that Tobias, who loathed charity, might view these books not as a windfall but as an insult, and he very soon found that he couldn't bear the idea of giving them up. They (and Mum) were often his only escape from loneliness, and made up for the ostracism he faced from the other children of Spinner's End. He read by the hour, forgetting the gnawing hunger that often plagued him, forgetting his worries about Eileen, forgetting everything but the words on the page.

At night, when Tobias read to Eileen from the paper, Severus still lay on the floor, but now instead of listening for every word, he wondered about the books and the mysterious benefactor who had sent them.

When he finally hit on it, he felt silly for not realizing sooner. Didn't they always arrive in some strange, roundabout fashion? Weren't they always popping up in odd, out-of-the-way places, with his name already inscribed by some mysterious hand? The latest, a thin, secondhand travel guide to the Pyrenees, had been rolled up and tucked into a knothole in the dingy fence that separated his back garden from the next lot over. Clearly, the books were being delivered by magic, and he knew of only two people who could do magic.

The puzzle here became, admittedly, a little more difficult. Gran made a point of never doing magic where it might be seen by Muggles (the very thought of the word and all the future secrets and learning it seemed to promise sent a delicious thrill through him). But Eileen _never_ gave him gifts—indeed, she never even spoke to him. It was rare for Severus to catch a glimpse of her more than once a week (spying through the knothole in his bedroom floor excepted). Gran, he felt fairly sure, had means to provide him with more books than he could ever read, and Eileen didn't. But all of the books were either terribly cheap or obviously used, and Gran said purebloods (whatever those were) didn't buy things secondhand.

Perhaps Eileen _had_ noticed the dejected hours he'd spent sobbing outside her door the day that Jake had blackened his eye and hurt his jaw. Perhaps her motherly instinct had wakened pity in her heart and she, in her reclusive way, was trying to tell him she loved him after all. He knew from illicit peering through the keyhole that the front room was filled with books of all kinds. Would it be so difficult for her to write his name in the covers of titles she thought he'd enjoy and magic the books to some spot where she knew he would find them?

At nights, he began to listen for any hint from Eileen that the books were from her. He wondered if Tobias did in fact already know about the library that was slowly growing in the back recesses of his closet, and was simply waiting for Severus to express his thanks.

One night, lying in bed with the newest volume (a dingy paperback _Treasure Island_) tucked under his pillow, the thought struck him with a sudden pang. Tobias did so much for him. Did he think that Severus was ungrateful or unappreciative? Was his silence on the matter perhaps a symptom of pain or disappointment? He slipped his small hand beneath the pillow and touched the book's torn cover, his heart swelling painfully with adoration for his parents, for loving Tobias who cared for him so well, for poor, sad Mother, who was so very ill.

Clearly, there was only one thing for it, and that was to thank both of his parents properly—Tobias first, of course. He smiled into his pillow, the guilt of his ungratefulness dissipating with the knowledge that in the morning, all would be made well.


End file.
